Map Making Tips & Tricks

[Quelex]

This thread has not been updated in several years. So please keep in mind some of the information is no longer accurate. The newer version update may or may not take place as planned. If it does, it will be on the main site. Not here.

I hope you still find some use in this.

Welcome to the Map Maker’s Tips and Tricks thread. This giant list here will constantly be updated with the answers to questions asked, or just information that should be put up.

I have reorganized this A LOT, before it was just a giant mess.

Everything is now in the following topics. To FIND something you put a * in front of the subtopic (like you try to find: *Example):

Triggers: Cloaking Buildings, //Stacking//, Hyper Triggers, Blocking Actions, Allying Computers with Players, Anti-Cheat Triggers, //EUD Triggers//, Kill to Cash, Refilling Scarabs, Interceptors, etc, Location follows unit
Players: Player Color List, Player 12, Player 12+ Effects.
Units: Unit Info, More than 9999 HP, Kill Scores, Glowing Wireframes.
Terrain: Null Terrain, Fastest Map Minerals, Changing Tile set, Map Dimensions, Square Terrain info, Square and Null Terrain with any editor.
Misc: Instant Upgrades, Random, Protecting Maps, Crashing Starcraft, Text, Getting Computers to Use Spells, Map Screenshots.

Triggers

*Cloaking Buildings

You need a trigger to do this. Keep in mind this only works on some buildings, it can also work on some units (ghosts, tanks, and such). Also all players must have to see the unit before and I think after it cloaks unless they can't get detectors, or else the game will crash.

Player: Unit who owns building
Conditions: Always -> Always
Actions: Set Doodad state -> Disable Doodad state for building owned by player at 'location'

//*Stacking//

To stack you must do the follower things:
a. Ctrl+0-9 a builder unit so you can call upon it later.
b. Turn off the light using the trigger below.
c. Call your builder unit and start building on top of buildings. Too many buildings stacked causes problems should they be defense buildings. Also keep in mind that buildings that are defense cannot respond to enemies while lights are off.
d. Turn on the light.

Player: player whos stacking
Conditions: Bring -> Player Brings #unit to 'location'
Actions: Run AI Script -> Run Turn off allied vision to players 1-8 Unless there is some vision you want, just make sure to disable vision for the player stacking. Also this AI Script doesn't appear in some versions of StarEdit.
Actions: Preserve trigger -> Preserve Trigger.

To get it to turn back on do the reverse and turn on allied vision.

In the tradition of removing triggers that starcraft players enjoy, the information for the 1.14 suggests that stacking is now a thing of the past. So if you wish to see it again, downgrade and play alone or over LAN.

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news.

*Hyper Triggers

The preserve trigger action as you should know by now, makes the trigger constantly repeat as long as the conditions remain true. However there is a 2 second wait time before it makes the trigger occur again. This is helpful in some maps, but for those who wish to get rid of it I think this is the trigger:

Player: any active computer player that has no triggers on it that use the Wait Action.
Condition: Always
Actions: Wait 0 milliseconds (x62 times)
Actions: Preserve Trigger

*Blocking Actions

Blocking actions are sometimes overlooked, and it shows when testing your map. All actions in your trigger will occur at pretty much the same time (maybe a 0.002 second difference.) and Blocking actions make the rest of the trigger afterwhich have to wait for that action to finish, here they are:

Wait, Center View, Transmission.
I've also heard switch works as well, these can be useful for example let's say you wanted the game to have background music that looped, you'd use these.

*Allying Computers with Players

Sometimes people don't know how, even though it's pretty easy. Make a trigger for the computer player (Or human, I don't remember.) that uses the Set Ally Status action. Fill it out simply, but remember it's only affecting one player, so do the same trigger for the other player. If you want ally vision shared, use the Run AI Script action's Turn Shared Vision On for Player #.

*Anti Cheat Triggers

Originally Posted by (X-Vandread @ Mar. 09 2005,4:28pm)

i dont noe if i should be sorry to bring out this old thing but another question: in some maps if you type in a cheat (eg.black sheep wall) it immediatley ends u in mission failure. howd you do that?

These are triggers intended to stop a cheat from being used on single player, and also can stop map hackers and such really.

Black Sheep Wall Place a Seige tank owned by each player in some random spot and make them invincible. and place in their range, but not in there vision (elevation helps with this) a building with low hp. Once the cheat is enabled, your seige tank will target the building (relying on the fact that the building is owned by an enemy) and blow it up. Make this trigger:

Player: Who owns tank.
Conditions: Bring -> Player (who owns building) brings exactly 0 Building to location 'AntiBSW'
Conditions: Kill -> Player (who owns tank) has killed atleast 1 building.
Actions: Failure

Anti map Hack

This is a great way to stop map hackers from using it in games like Snipers, tag, and such. Place units that will crash the game if viewed on the map in random places that no one can see (this can be due to elevation or a number of other things). If the person enables map hack and scrolls the map past one of these units, the game will crash.

Anti Resource Cheats

These are pretty easy, but only work if the players can't get a certain amount of resources, so it's pretty limited. RPGs like FF3, the ones where you can 1 or two resources for each level up, if they use the 500 mineral or gas cheat, or Show Me The Money, you can just put a trigger that makes it so if a player acumulates atleast 500 resources, the game ends in failure.

Anti Power Overwhelming

This one may be handy to some, and never used by many. This could be done by making a lower elevation be near a cliff or that the units on the lower elevation have access to. Put a seige tank or 2 or 3 on the higher elevation and make it so they're placed in the right spot so they can't be reached by a melee fighter (Preferably an infested terran). Spawn that unit on the lower elevation and have them respawn every 30 seconds or so, if the cheat is enabled, the infested terran won't be able to be killed, and will kill a tank. Then make a trigger where if at least one tank is killed there, the game ends in failure.

Anti Medieval Man

Very easy to block, set anything that you don't want people to research to take a massive amount of time, (which works great with the Operation Cwal Anti cheat) or make it so when they use certain abilities (Seige tank mode, Archon warp, Recall, spawn broodlings, dark swarm, disruption web, etc.) the game crashes or ends in failure.

Anti Operation Cwal

The great thing about operation cwal is that it affects all players, and it's so easy to block. Place a nuclear missle silo somewhere on the map, and have a neutral or computer player own it. Set the AI Script to build a nuke at location on it, and in the settings for nukes set it so the time limit is massive, and then make a trigger so that if the nuke is ever made, it launches at some location, and when a building or unit in that location is killed, the map ends in failure. Or if this works (haven't tested it, along with many of these, they're just theories ) make it so if they bring a nuclear missle to the location of the nuke silo, the game ends.

Anti Modify the Phase Variance

Set any building or unit you don't want to be able to be made to have a build time of 8739, that way if it's used, and a unit is built, the game crashes.

//*EUD Triggers//

"God Triggers" as they are called can be used to modify unit properties, such as graphics, speeds, weapons, and such. A good example of this was the "Crazy Dragoons Madness" map that someone posted on the forum with Dragoons using Yamato as their weapon.

They could also be used to add shields to non protoss units. Many wonderous triggers could be done like detecting hp or energy, player names, and upgrades.

Blizzard removed EUDs in 1.13 to make sure that no one would use them to potentially spread viruses. But mainly because it crashed any mac users in the game.

However if you download anything before 1.13 you can still do them, and play your friends on a LAN.

*Kill to Cash (Minerals for kills)

A frequently required thing. This trigger makes it so that whenever a unit is killed, the player who kills it recieves minerals.

You can't use kills as a way to do this (unless you expect very low amounts of killing going on, or have the patience to go on for a very long time), so you have to use kill score since you can actually reduce that.

So make your trigger like this:

Player: All players
Conditions: Current player Kills and Razings score is at least 25.
Conditions: Current player kills and razings score is at most 124.

(You'll want to have several of these with at least and at most. This will make it so that it gives them money if they have more than your thing, but won't give a bit extra because of a trigger mishap).

Actions: Modify Score for current player: Subtract 25 kills and razings.
Actions: Modify resources for current player: add 2 minerals.
Actions: Preserve trigger.

Of course thats just an example, you will most likely change the variables. Just to warn you that trigger set up does not work perfectly, after the 1st kill it gives twice as much. (If you get 4 minerals for killing a zergling using that set up, then all zerglings after that give 8 minerals) So you may want to make your own trigger or edit the amount of minerals to suit it.

Legacy Weapon has 2 tutorials on Staredit.net. Scroll down, use those as a secondary resource.

You can download a copy of that trigger, and others set up like it, at this Thread.

*Refilling Scarabs, Interceptors, etc

Simply set up this trigger:

Player: The one who owns the unit
Conditions: Always
Actions: Modify Hangar Count -> Add at most 8/10 to hangar for # of unit at 'anywhere' owned by player who has the unit.
Actions: Preserve Trigger

*Location follows unit

This is almost always used in a bound map, just to make it so that if you don't dodge a unit coming at you, you die. Its also used all the time in evolves maps making the units spawn wherever the air unit it floating.

This trigger will have two parts, the second part is just for if you are making it so that if it touches a unit it dies.

Prerequisites:
- Most have a location somewhere on the map, should probably make it so that it is 1x1 for bounds.
- There cannot be more than one of the unit owned by that player, unless you are only focusing on one area in the map and not using 'anywhere' as a location.

Players: Player that owns the unit
Conditions: Always
Actions: Move Location -> Center location labeled 'location' on units owned by player who owns unit at 'location' (this is usually anywhere).
Actions: Preserve Trigger

Now to make it so that if a unit touches it, you die, you would do this:

Player: player owning unit.
Conditions: Bring -> Player (You should do another Bring condition for each player that owns a unit you don't want to touch.) brings at least 1 units to 'location' (this location should be the one you centered on your unit).
Actions: Kill units at location -> Kill 1 unit for player at 'location' (the one you centered on it).
Actions: Preserve trigger or defeat.


Players

*Player Color List

A list of player colors is available, go to this Staredit Thread

*Player 12

Player 12 is the neutral player who is given control of units owned by players who left the game. Player 12 can only get units if placed by some editors and on multiplayer when an opponent quits.

However StarEdit never allowed any triggers to be done for player 12, so you have to use special triggers you can download from the site.

Open your staredit program and go to triggers and load the one you just downloaded. You'll get one trigger filled with tons of actions and conditions that effect player 12. Delete the actions or conditions you don't need and modify the ones you use to your hearts content, just don't click the "." or you won't be able to set it back I think without reloading the trigger. Make sure that you check the actions and conditions in the little boxes next to them or else the trigger will not work.

*Player 12+ Effects

By placing a unit owned by players that are not belonging to the first 12, you can get different effects. Here are a few.

Player 13: Increases frame rate of all PREPLACED units (Just like others, it won't affect those created with triggers). However it does not increase speed.

Player 14: Multiple:

2x Gamespeed: Place a map revealer anywhere as the VERY FIRST UNIT PLACED.
4x Gamespeed: Place a scarab or interceptor somewhere on the map as the VERY FIRST UNIT PLACED.
Freeze units: Place a map revealer, scarab, or interceptor AFTER THE UNITS YOU WANT FROZEN. Frozen units cannot be controled or die and fog of war goes right over them.
Freeze Animation: Place a scanner sweep anywhere, and all moving units will have their animations frozen. Any frozen units killed will crash the game.

Player 19: Text control. Placing units or sprites owned by this player adds 3 characters of text before any typed message.

Player 161: Cloaking for units. Not much known.

This information was taken from Ðeathknight's tutorial on SE.net.

Units

*Unit Info

Zealots: A common error in maps is that the map maker does not know how this unit works. What you put in for damage is doubled. The zealot attacks twice, armor of the enemy is put into effect for each hit. Example:

- Zealot Damage listed when hovering weapon: 24
- Enemy unit has 21 hp, and 2 armor
- Zealot swings once, deals 10 damage, swings again, deals 10.
- Enemy unit survives.

Firebats: I believe the same thing is done with firebats. The damage is multiplied by either 2 or 3. Not 100% sure at the moment though.

Note that most (actually its probably ALL) units added into the editor cannot be created with triggers.

Aldaris: Aldaris has linked damage with Tassadar. Aldaris cannot be created using triggers like the other "blank" heroes. You can't use abilities.

Gerard DuGalle: Cannot be created with triggers. Has linked damage with Norad II and Mensk.

Raszagal: Cannot be created using triggers. Her abilities need to be researched.

Cargo Ship: Cannot actually do anything. Health does not appear. When selected in a group they have the lurker wire frame, but when selected alone it looks almost like a terran add on.

Mercenary Gunship:Cannot actually do anything. Health does not appear. When selected in a group they have the lurker wire frame, have a valkyrie wire frame alone.

Arcturus Mengsk: Cannot use abilities.

Unit 2008: This unit can be preplaced on a map by StarForge and such. You can do this by placing any unit on the map and then changing its properties and setting the unit type to the number 2008. It should look a bit like this in StarForge:



It has several different effects:

- it is classified as a transport
- it can have units loaded into it
- it looks like a zergling
- seems to be very wide, because if a unit is on the same horizontal coordinate as it, it can be attacked from any distance
- it has shield points
- it can't always be seen if u own it
- Starcraft crashes if clicked

*More than 9999 HP

Using StarForge, you can set it in unit properties so that units have more than 9999 hp. It will appear in the map as though they are invincible, although they can still be attacked (untried).

*Kill Scores

Each and every unit in the game has it's own kill score. So whenever you kill a unit, you gain more towards that score. That is why at the end of a match, you can see a number for kills that tells you basically how well you did compared to others. Kill score can also be used in triggers.

For a list of each units' Kill score, go here.

*Glowing Wireframes

Wireframes are the line like designs that show up on the bottom with the unit info during a game that changes color based on how much HP that unit has left. You can get some strange effects to the wireframe by using StarForge or SCM Draft 2 . Open up the unit stats or select the unit, you'll see how much HP they have and another box next to their HP that is 0. If you change it to anything else, the wireframe will have a different affect dependant on the tile set.

Terrain

*Null Terrain

Null (It is just black, not to be confused with the space background.) terrain is something you may have seen before. It's usually in bound maps, it can be placed using things like starforge. It acts as if it were a cliff or water, where only air units or floating units can cross it.

*Fastest Map Minerals

This is a very very common question. Get something like starforge and place a mineral field next to a start location and right click and select stack (If you put down one mineral field and you wanted 50, you'd select it and stack 50. If you had 2 mineral fields selected, you'd put 25). Or place a bunch of minerald fields around, select them all, and put them on the same coordinate. This makes it so that more than 2 drones can be mining the "same" field at once.

My reccomendation for getting it as close as possible is to make things snap to grid, put the start location down, put the mineral field right under the start location so it's not on top of it. Then hit the properties and move it up or down 10 in the Y Coordinate.

*Changing Tile set, Map Dimensions

It is possible to change the tile set of your map (chosen at the beginning of setting scenario settings). Allowing you to quickly make a map look different, handy should you be working on a new version of a map and you want it to be larger, or you want the tile set to be different. In order to do this download SCM Draft 2 or GUEdit.
However when changing the terrain, it may glitch up some parts, however you can easily fix this so don't worry.

*Square Terrain Info

Someone brought this up. Just in case I didn't cover it enough, you can do this with StarForge, ISOM, and maybe SCM Draft 2 (Haven't used that one much).

*Square and Null Terrain with any Editor

Ever wish you could make square terrain but can't get ISOM, Starforge, or any of the other editors to work? Here's the solution:

Note that this can only be done when starting a new map!



Ok, first thing is that you set up the dimensions and such as you want. Then select any tileset you do not want. Then select a default terrain from the list, it might not matter in some cases which.



Then left click and hold down the button on the name of the tileset, and drag it up to the tileset you actually want and press enter. You should still see the default terrain listing from the previously selected tileset.



Here you can see that it fills the whole map with null (black) terrain, and any terrain you place will be in squared form. However, when you move anything over the null terrain, it kind of glitches as you can see, but that goes away whenever you reload the map or place terrain there.

This is a handy method for those who want to make a bound map or something with staredit or some other editor if they cannot use a newer one.

If you run into any problems with this method, let me know. I haven't actually made a map with this, I just kinda accidently stumbled upon it.

Misc

*Instant Upgrades

Instant upgrades involves little effort. If you have SCXE it tells you. Type 8739 into the time for the upgrade and it'll be set to 0. Remember that should you need to change other parts of the upgrade later, you have to set the time back to 8739. Also don't type 8739 into unit build times and other things, it causes the game to crash

*Random

Randomization isn't too complicated a thing in starcraft, however I'm not too positive it works well. I'm sure there's many different ways of doing it, and many people are baffled by the thought of something not being the same as always in a UMS.

Some examples:
a. Mario party's guess how many DT game involves this.
b. Wraith Defense does randomization in some versions to determine where the enemies travel.

There's a few ways, however I haven't tested these however the first one is one I know works.

a. Place a critter in an area and put a bunch of locations. Critters wander randomly, and using the bring trigger you can take advantage of this.
b. Using the Switch trigger's Random selection, I'd think it'd be obvious.

A note on Random from switches: The problem with randomize with switches is that it in reality gives one option a 33% chance. Because let's say the switch was cleared to begin with. It would then have a 33% chance to stay cleared, and a 66% chance to become set because set obviously sets it, and toggle will switch it to the opposite of what it already was. Keep that in mind and try to work around it.

Randomization in case you didn't know who make it so that in every game there's a chance of a trigger doing something different, affecting gameplay. Which would be useful if you want a player to get a random unit or amount of resources or score or something. I'm sure this section may confuse you, but just consider the bring condition and you should be able to figure it out.

*Protecting maps

There are some programs like GUEdit, StarForge, and the other one (sorry I don’t remember the name. Proedit or something?) that will protect your maps from being edited. This is great for if you want to spread your map on Bnet without idiots rigging it and such. (Proedit or whatever it is called, I’ll let you know when the site is back up, is the best for this as it hasn’t been cracked by an unprotector).

*Crashing Starcraft

There's many ways of crashing starcraft, and here's a few.

a. give player x a nuke silo and make a trigger using the AI script to build nuke, and a nuke's build time to 8739.
b. Set player x to a certain player color that will crash starcraft, or the portrait of the flag unit would due to the color #.
c. Set a unit's build time to 8739.
d. Display a unit's portrait that will crash the game.
e. place a unit that crashes starcraft on the map.
f. Place units for a player the game can't run (player 9-11, 13-?) in a player's field of vision.

*Text
You can change the colors of text and get an overlapping effect by copying and pasting characters into the text in the editor. Anything after what you put down will be that color, unless you put another color afterwards.

You can get the colors by using SCXE or StarForge. You can also download this notepad here.

1.14 added new colors due to the player colors being added in for players' names. The old note pad for downloading was updated.

http://www.staredit.net/index.php?showtopic=33721



These colors will only work IN GAME.

Code Sample
Player 1 Red
Player 2 Blue
Player 3 Teal
Player 4 Purple
Player 5 Orange
Player 6 Brown
Player 7 White
Player 8 Yellow
Player 9 Green
Player 10 Pale Yellow
Player 11 Tan
Player 12 Dark Cyan (It's hard to see because its so small but its there.)



*Getting Computers to use Spells

You cannot actually control a computers actions without using the order action, and that doesn't even help with spells. So here is a list of ways to get computers to use spells or skills here.

*Map Screenshots

Ever wondered how people make those pictures of their whole map? There is a program made for this, that will create a .jpg image from a map file. It is useful for those who have websites or just plain want to show off their map so people will know what it looks like and be more likely to download it.

Here's a download link:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

For additional tutorials you can go to Staredit.net and look in there, there is plenty of stuff that might never get covered by this.

Thanks for reading.

Quelex

Changelog:

10-2-06

- Updated the new text colors to the note pad, added a fixed version of the new text colors to Misc: Text

10-1-06

- Added new colors to Misc: Text

8-31-06

- Fixed Units: Unit Info

8-9-06

- Added a note to Misc: Random
- Removed a two sections in Misc: Random

8-1-06

- Added to Trigger: Stacking to reflect the new 1.14 patch's disabling.
- Added striking through to subtopics blizzard has disabled.
- Shortened the name of Trigger: Location follows Unit.
- Fixed a few mistakes made with iB code.

7-27-06

- Added Terrain: Square Terrain Info
- Added to Terrain: Fastest Map Minerals
- Added Unit: Glowing Wireframe
- Fixed Misc: Text

6-6-06

- Fixed Trigger: Hyper Triggers

5-13-06

- Added Trigger: Refilling Scarabs, Interceptors, etc
- Added Trigger: Location follows unit (when unit touches another unit it dies)

5-10-06

- Added Misc: Map Screenshots information
- Added Terrain: Square and Null Terrain with any editor

3-26-06

- Fixed unit information and added sprite 2008. Special Thanks to spacechicken.

3-24-06

- Added Kill Scores information
- Added Comp Spells information
- Reorganized

3-23-06

- Player 12+ effects info added

1-26-06

- Kills to Cash info added

1-3-06:

- Player 12 Info added

12-19-05:

- Player color list added

12-5-05:

- Added new randomization method. Corrected some grammar mistakes.
- Added color to section titles, to help eyes seperate sections.
- Added new unit info on "Blank units" and Firebats.
- Added info on EUDs and 9999+ HP

[Gangstah]

Have fun with this map

[Reap This Whirlwind]

Quelex *in one of my maps i wanted to make a pylon cloaked but whenever i saw it the game crashed * i did the trigger cause i knew that how it worked but i want to know whats wrong *

also how do i make buildings like a refinery comandcenter and stuff like that disabled?

also 1 more thing how do i make dt's visible when theres no detctor around?

vision?

[Quelex]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Reap This Whirlwind @ Dec. 14 2004,5:04pm)]Quelex *in one of my maps i wanted to make a pylon cloaked but whenever i saw it the game crashed * i did the trigger cause i knew that how it worked but i want to know whats wrong *

also how do i make buildings like a refinery comandcenter and stuff like that disabled?

also 1 more thing *how do i make dt's visible when theres no detctor around?

Try placing something like a missle turret next to it owned by you, and then a few seconds after it cloaks remove the turret. I think there's another way of doing it, but I'm not going to mess around with it tonight.

I'm not sure about the second thing, but the only answer I can think of is use the set doodad state on them and make sure players who can detect it can see it like other buildings.

The last one is not very useful, and I'm not sure what you mean by it. Hallucinated DTs are uncloaked, and walk around visible (it's quite cool), same thing with other units like that. However if you want any player to be able to see it just set it so you have allied vision with that player, they don't have to have allied vision with you back.

[Reap This Whirlwind]

ok ill try that thx for the help

good info!

[Reap This Whirlwind]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (Quelex @ Dec. 14 2004,8:57pm)]

Try placing something like a missle turret next to it owned by you, and then a few seconds after it cloaks remove the turret. I think there's another way of doing it, but I'm not going to mess around with it tonight.

I'm not sure about the second thing, but the only answer I can think of is use the set doodad state on them and make sure players who can detect it can see it like other buildings.

The last one is not very useful, and I'm not sure what you mean by it. Hallucinated DTs are uncloaked, and walk around visible (it's quite cool), same thing with other units like that. However if you want any player to be able to see it just set it so you have allied vision with that player, they don't have to have allied vision with you back.

umm the problem is that the pylons are by cannons so should i just adjust the hp and armor for that?

[Ritch]

I use StarForge and it's kinda confusing. What different map editor should i use?

Scxtra or scmdraft (think written right)